The level 90 talents are just bad, none of them are usefull, sometimes i feel i'd just not talent into them at all. They used to be good at start of the beta but they nerfed them and changed mechanics to them until they became worthless.
They have all these cool demon names from wich you're supposed to take something but after u get them you either cripple yourself(KjC) or you hit like a critter(AV).

The 6 sec. active on a 1 min. CD is pretty reasonable and can really get you places, especially combined with Burning Rush.

The passive is less of a "trap" than people think, once you get used to not having an autocancel on every move anymore (you can still quite easily cancel with Esc) - and btw: The initial 10% slow aren't that horrible either.

The talent might be a bit undertuned, but all in all, I like being able to cast spells on the move (other than instants like the costly fel flame).

I have yet to try the other 2 extensivly, but it seems you could potentially make clever use of AV in both PvE and PvP, if you get the timing for the active down really well.

MF seems like an extremely situational PvE talent, but that doesn't neccessarily deem it downright useless.

Destro is amazing in BG's, soloing, and heroics because of how fast everything dies and you can shadowburn everything and have infinite embers, amongst using havoc to double shadowburn.

I think it's going to suffer however in raids and arenas where fights are longer/single target and shadowburn cant be abused and you will be ember starved.

As for level 90 talents... I think people are underestimating KC... if its getting changed to 30% I think it will be quite a good talent.
AV is garbage at 5% passive and 25% active... even the active portion is barely noticeable, that says something.
MF is used to break stealthies in pvp, and make HoG and touch of chaos bigger for demo locks in PVE. Pretty much it.

I like MF as demo because of the curse auras being 45 yards and HoG/Chaos wave hitting more targets. Hellfire is a big hazard in instances with MF, it pulls any mob you see in the far horizon so I find myself using it less. I think you could reduce the hellfire area to something less hilarious and change the wording to "up to 500%", stealth classes agree with me.

By the way, what is it with touch of chaos taking a new target automatically when the old one is dead? I have done some unintended pulls by hitting it a millisecond after my target is dead and getting a new pack of elites charging my way, "I was not prepared".

How about Demonic Leap bug sending me 100 yards backwards, right in the arms of the enemy team, when I was carrying the flag in Twin Peaks and had just climbed up the long stairs. Again, I was not prepared, now I know why they call it the Illidan spec.

From a demo lock perspective, and as much as I love the MoP changes (and I do, and thank you for them, truly), I do take issue with a couple of points here:

Originally Posted by Xelnath

In 5.1, KJC's cast time nerf is coming down to 30%. MF is the pick of choice for top end raiders and challenge mode players while AV is the pick for people who want to never think about pushing another button.

As demo, why would you ever take KJC? any nerf at all, be it 30% or 1% is completely negated by being able to pop meta and ToC on the move. If the passive was removed we could at least use it to continue fury build, but as it is it complicates gameplay and forces a relearn of cancel casting macros making the whole thing a bit pointless.

MF will undoubtedly see use on raid fights where the adds are spread before the tank picks them up, however it will most certainly NOT see use in challenge modes, the dungeons are small, the adds are picked up quickly into a neat ball, and the risk is allmighty. There is of coure also the benefit of de-stealthing in PvP. I ask if a talent that has a niche so infinitesimally small really belongs on a bottom tier?

AV will, I hope, see some benefit when raiding starts and we have some damaging effects of the size that will make popping it useful, but I fear that after the beta process (and all those postings of fights where it was a vast chunk of damage done), not to mention PvP, it has become one of those spells that is un-balanceable.

Originally Posted by Xelnath

Pandemic is actually huge for demonology, as they don't have to stance dance Doom anymore.

Absolutely agreed, but the stance dance at the beginning of a fight is still vaguely ridiculous and clunky, is it not? I'm still not sure what benefit we gain from not having it simply castable exactly as corruption now is?

I'd add to this Void Ray. I'm not sure exactly what the intention is for demo aoe, it would be great to know. I assume that by design it's corruption/Hog on adds then pop meta, imm aura and void ray, then CW or HoG for burst. I find it hard to believe that Harvest Life was intended to be a part of any spec's rotation? I'd far rather not be pidgeon-holed into it, frankly, although it does offset the awful self damage and make it less embarassing to be healed. The problem is that void ray is (a) not visible in an add pack so you don't know where you're shooting and (b) doesn't seem to reliably extend corruption. The amount of times I've sat there spamming it and thinking 'why the hell isn't corruption duration going up, I'm SURE I'm hitting them, aren't I? Don't believe me? Try it yourself. Surely the solution is to give it a shadowflame style cone to make it useable?

Finally, the cd on summoning a demon of any sort after quick-rezzing one - our demo demons hit hard, they die a lot, it would be a real QoL change to make sure we didn't suffer for that.

All discussions at the stage of an expansion must feel like we are bashing the good work of you and Blizz, we (or most of us) really aren't. Personally I love the changes, but would also love to see the little annoyances shaved off the top of what's been a very clever class reboot.

If our lvl 75 tier and lvl 90 tier were switched, ppl would be happy with the talent tree. I don't know why they didn't do that.

"1 in 4 Americans are skeptical on climate change...who gives a shit? That doesn't matter. You don't need other people's opinions on a fact. You may as well have a poll asking: Which number is bigger? 5 or 15? Do Owls exist? Are there hats?"

Same reason the bottom talent in the old trees was always obtained before the level cap - so you got it and got used to it before getting there.

For Warlocks leveling up this is amazing. Instead of having to wait all the way to 90, they get the cool talents at 75 and have half of Northrend and the whole of Cata and Mists to get used to them and experiment with them. As a leveling up Warlock I remember how much I pined for my Haunt talent, and how much it changed my outlook on how warlocks played. I felt like a REAL warlock then. My guess is that this tier at 75 will do much the same for other (new) warlocks.

MF could have an active use, it is weird that the other two have one and not MF.
An active use that plays with the AoE cap maybe ?
Like during 5 sec you don't have an AoE cap, or the AoE cap is doubled...

Destro is amazing in BG's, soloing, and heroics because of how fast everything dies and you can shadowburn everything and have infinite embers, amongst using havoc to double shadowburn.

I think it's going to suffer however in raids and arenas where fights are longer/single target and shadowburn cant be abused and you will be ember starved.

Yeah, Destro works well in dungeons because you can abuse Shadowburn. It often does more than 50% of my DPS on trash.
In raids there won't be so many adds, and even when there are some it will be much more difficult to be the killer among 20 people.

If our lvl 75 tier and lvl 90 tier were switched, ppl would be happy with the talent tree. I don't know why they didn't do that.

No, we wouldn't.

The entire tier is just useless - whether you put that tier on the bottom, top or middle, no lock likes having 1 less talent than every other class. Honestly, please go look at every talent tree in the game if you have time. Find me another tier as bad as our lvl 90 one (of any level). It's the most situational/useless tier in the game.

Im not one for making negative comments but ill go on record to say that its not only the worst tier in the whole lock tree but from what ive seen its probably the worst talent tier in game.

Worst tier in-game is the DK rune-regen tier. They just cut the rune-regen mechanics out of the game and then let you take one of them back, while still completely taking the old blood tap away.

It's basically a thief stealing your watch and your wallet, then offering you your watch and 2 other watches of the same prize-category back (of course only one of them) and still keeping your wallet with a nice mean grin on his face.

And I know, other classes have this, too, but at least they get to pick interesting stuff or get a net benefit on top of it, like extra spell damage with the lvl 90 mage tier or something . . .

Worst tier in-game is the DK rune-regen tier. They just cut the rune-regen mechanics out of the game and then let you take one of them back, while still completely taking the old blood tap away.

But whichever ability they pick actually has some gameplay impact. It doesn't matter if they are picking from something they used to have (hi Howl vs Coil vs. Fury), at least the end result is something. The only tier that comes close to competing on suckfactor is Mage's 90, but I think IW nets out to a pvp dmg buff since they probably aren't balanced to have 100% uptime on it, but in pvp they can easily game their burst with it to do just that.

If our 90 tier disappeared tomorrow, we wouldn't change our tactics or playstyles at all. The entire tier is insignificant beyond belief and is a definitive design failure.

If our 90 tier disappeared tomorrow, we wouldn't change our tactics or playstyles at all. The entire tier is insignificant beyond belief and is a definitive design failure.

That it doesn't change our rotation at all isn't a design failure. I'm absolutely fine with it, as I said above, not getting a big shiny at the level cap has always been the standard talent design; suddenly changing your rotation at the level cap would be a bad thing, since that's the wrong time to be relearning to play. The failure imho is that what we do have is such low impact that it can be ignored altogether and is seemingly designed with that very intention.

That it doesn't change our rotation at all isn't a design failure. I'm absolutely fine with it, as I said above, not getting a big shiny at the level cap has always been the standard talent design; suddenly changing your rotation at the level cap would be a bad thing, since that's the wrong time to be relearning to play. The failure imho is that what we do have is such low impact that it can be ignored altogether and is seemingly designed with that very intention.

Where did you read the word 'rotation'? Play style/tactics != rotation. It means, if I'm a DK and I'm going for a kill in pvp, I can pop Desecrated Ground and be immune to CC during my burst. Or if I'm a Shaman and want to play with a perma pet, I can take Primal Elementist. Etc. Ours are so extremely situational that they almost never have a an impact on how I play or what abilities I use. A talent needs to have a purpose, whereas ours have somewhere between niche and none.

Tbf, I think we agree, but you're reading my post wrong. Not that it's going to do us any good, as this has been the feedback on this tier since it was first introduced and then throughout beta. The only responses we have seen on it is that somehow Xel & co are happy with this atrocious tier, which is far from a promising sign.

Again - if I could take only the active portion of KC as a talent, I would choose that over all 3 current abilities, because while situational, I would actually use it. That is the definition of a poorly designed tier, when you would prefer a 'nerfed' version of a spell to its current implementation.

WoW? Which have you been playing? I don't recall putting my final point in Improved Immolate or Improved Shadow Bolt feeling particularly awesome... Or maybe that's because I was 3/3 Bane already *Shrug*

Just a fyi, if you were to bring down demo AoE, you'd have to bring down several other specs AoE too, I'm definitly not topping AoE meters when playing with my guildies, we end up pretty even, me mostly below without cooldowns, slightly above with, and this is with people I've raided hardmodes with for the past 4 years so we're all equally skilled.

Granted this may not reflect the power of having dots rolling for an extended time on top of that, but if that is your problem might aswell just remove the refresh from void ray and buff its damage/radius cone so we don't "have" to use harvest life in meta.